People who dress up in werewolf costumes may want to know how this legend got started. Hairy, bloodthirsty killers, called lycanthropes come out when the moon is full.

Lycanthrope myths have existed since the dawn of civilization. In 400 BC, a werewolf by the name of Damarchus is said to have won medals at the Olympics. In 77 AD, the Roman scribe Pliny introduced us to the werewolf's habits and lifestyles in his Natural History.Even Virgil, Rome's most famous spin doctor, had to admit that Rome's elite had a problem in the lycanthrope department. From the very beginning, Rome and all her tributaries were littered with werewolves.Their popularity fell dramatically, though, in the years after the fall of Rome, due in part to the Canon Episcopi, the Catholic edict that forbade people from believing in witches and werewolves.It wasn't until the 11th century, when Prince Vseslav, ruler of what is today Belarus, was nicknamed "the magician" for his apparent ability to transform himself into animals, that European reports of lycanthropes started flooding in.The 1521 trial of two French peasants suspected of being werewolves received wide notoriety. As with the witch trials, the sentence was death by burning, and more than 30,000 werewolves met their fate next to the witches.It is believed that some of these werewolves were in fact religious dissenters, but the official reports maintain there was an outbreak of lycanthropy among the radical thinkers.European werewolves showed a distinct taste for Bourgeois French and Hochdeutsch German cuisines, with virtually no attacks reported outside those two countries. Coincidentally, perhaps, highway robbers wearing wolfskins often accosted the aristocracy in those places.By the late 1700s, government-funded werewolf hunters were hard at work in France and Germany, catching, charging and executing anyone whose habits or lifestyle might hint of lycanthropy.With a European crusade against them, werewolves appear to have welcomed the opening of the New World, settling in with the other French immigrants in the shantytowns and logging camps along the St. Lawrence River. It didn't take long before tales were told of a new menace that hid in the darkness.The first of these Canadian legends of the werewolf (or loup-garou in French) dates back to this era.The classic loup-garou tale is told of a miller named Joachim Crete who lived on the Gatineau River. Against the warnings of his neighbors, Crete took in and helped a weary French immigrant named Hubert Sauvageau. The two men hit it off, carousing and drinking together at all hours of the night.Almost immediately, sheep and cattle were found ripped apart in the small settlement. Rumors of the loup-garou abounded, but Crete paid no heed to the superstition. Even when a child fell victim to the creature's attacks, he refused to consider his ward a suspect.The miller's behavior got worse with Sauvageau's influence. Crete had long ago forsaken the church when, on Christmas Eve, he heard a noise coming from outside the house. The rest of the town was at midnight Mass, so he knew it wasn't one of the villagers. The two men went to investigate, but being more than a little drunk they didn't find anything.When Crete finally made his way back to the kitchen he sobered up enough to realize that Sauvageau was not with him. He was about to go outside to look when he heard a growling from the stairs. He turned and saw the loup-garou ready to leap on him, red eyes flashing in the darkness. The story goes that Crete battled with the beast, eventually hitting it with a scythe and cutting its ear off. The beast fled, never to return.The next morning when Crete awoke, he found Sauvageau washing up in the bathroom. Before he could tell the man of the loup-garou, he noticed that Sauvageau was missing an ear.Stories and legends like these have been told around campfires in the United States and Canada for centuries.Although we fear the werewolf, he is one of our secret treasures. Hollywood producer’s created hundreds of latex masks and movies with thin plotlines creating the fear and excitement were sought at the theater. Werewolf’s became permanently embedded in our Halloween traditions. So if you hear a noise in your backyard in dead of night, you might want to check the moon before investigating. It could cause the hair on the back of your neck stand up.ReferencesMills, C. A. 2010. The Werewolf in America: The True History. Powers, B. 2009. The Werewolf's Guide to Life: A Manual for the Newly Bitten.Summers, M. Werewolf in Lore and Legend. 2003.